The House of Lords

A unique feature of the British parliamentary system is its hereditary element. Unlike MPs, members of the House of Lords (known as peers) are not elected. They are members as of right. In the case of some of them, this right is the result of their being the holder of an inherited aristocratic title. The House of Lords is therefore a relic of earlier, undemocratic, times. The fact that it still exists is perhaps typically British. It has been allowed to survive but it has had to change, losing most of its power and altering its composition in the process.

The House of Lords (like the monarchy) has little, if any, real power any more. All proposals must have the agreement of the Lords before they can become law. But the power of the Lords to refuse a proposal for a law which has been agreed by the Commons is now limited. After a period which can be as short as six months the proposal becomes law anyway, whether or not the Lords agree.

The composition of the Lords has changed since 1958, when it became possible toward life peerages through the honors system. Entitlement to sit in the Lords does not pass to the children of life peers. The life peerage system has established itself as a means of finding a place in public life for distinguished retired politicians who may no longer wish to be as busy as MPs in the Commons, but who still wish to voice their opinions in a public forum. At the time of writing, four of the last five Prime Ministers, as well as about 300 past ministers and other respected politicians have accepted the offer of a life peerage. Political parties are, in fact, especially keen to send their older members who once belonged to the leadership of the party to the House of Lords. It is a way of rewarding them with prestige while at the same time getting them out of the way of the present party leaders in the Commons, where their status and reputation might otherwise create trouble for party unity. Informally, this practice has become known as being kicked upstairs. As a result of the life peerage system there are more than 300 people in the House of Lords who are not aristocrats and who have expertise in political life. In fact, as a result of recent reforms, these life peers now form a majority at its sittings.

The modern House of Lords is a forum for public discussion. Because its members do not depend on party politics for their position, it is sometimes able to bring important matters that the Commons has been ignoring into the open. More importantly, it is the place where proposals for new laws are discussed in great detail much more detail than the busy Commons has time for and in this way irregularities or inconsistencies in these proposals can be removed before they become law. More important still, it is argued, the Lords is a check on a government that, through its control of the Commons, could possibly become too dictatorial. Few people in politics are perfectly happy with the present arrangement. Most people agree that having two Houses of parliament is a good idea, and that this second house could have a more useful function if it were constituted in a different way (without the hereditary element). However, at this time, nobody can agree on what would be the best way to reform the composition of the second house, and so, despite recent reforms which have reduced the hereditary element, it remains as a fascinating (but valuable) anachronism in a modern state.

Elections

The system

Unlike in any other country in the world, the system of political representation that is used in Britain evolved before the coming of democracy. It also evolved before national issues became more important to people than local ones. In theory, the House of Commons is simply a gathering of people who each represent a particular place in the kingdom. Originally, it was not the concern of anybody in government as to how each representative was chosen. That was a matter for each town or county to decide for itself. Not until the nineteenth century were laws passed about how elections were to be conducted.

This system was in place before the development of modern political parties. These days, of course, nearly everybody votes for a candidate because he or she belongs to a particular party. But the tradition remains that an MP is first and foremost a representative of a particular locality. The result of this tradition is that the electoral system is remarkably simple. It works like this. The country is divided into a number of areas of roughly equal population (about 90,000), known as constituencies. Anybody who wants to be an MP must declare himself or herself as a candidate in one of these constituencies. On polling day (the day of the election), voters go to polling stations and are each given a single piece of paper (the ballot paper) with the names of the candidates for that constituency (only) on it. Each voter then puts a cross next to the name of one candidate. After the polls have closed, the ballot papers are counted. The candidate with the largest number of crosses next to his or her name is the winner and becomes the MP for the constituency.

And that the end of it. There is no preferential voting (if a voter chooses more than one candidate, that ballot paper is and is not counted); there is no counting of the proportion of votes for each party (all votes cast for losing candidates are simply ignored); there is no extra allocation of seats in Parliament according to party strengths. At the 1997 election, there were 659 constituencies and 659 MPs were elected. It was called a general election, and of course control of the government depended on it, but in formal terms it was just 659 separate elections going on at the same time.

Polling day

General elections always take place on a Thursday. They are not public holidays. People have to work in the normal way, so polling stations are open from seven in the morning till ten at night to give everybody the opportunity to vote. The only people who get a holiday are schoolchildren whose schools are being used as polling stations.

Each voter has to vote at a particular polling station. After being ticked off on the electoral register, the voter is given a ballot paper. Elections on the British mainland are always very fairly conducted. Northern Ireland, however, is a rather different story. There, the political tensions of so many years have had a negative effect on democratic procedures. Matters have improved since the 1960s, but the traditional, even though joking, slogan in Ulster on Polling day is vote early and vote often that is, try to vote as many times as you can by impersonating other people.

After the polls close, the marked ballot papers are taken to a central place in the constituency and counted. The Returning Officer then makes a public announcement of the votes cast for each candidate and declares the winner to be the MP for the constituency. This declaration is one of the few occasions during the election process when shouting and cheering may be heard.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30